Spiritual Ambiguities

Living on the boundary of psychology and religion.

by James W. Jones, Psy.D., Ph.D., Th.D.

The Hegemony of the Economic

The majority of people in the West seem convinced that the all the problems of the world are really economic. That economic "progress" is the only solution to the world's problems. Is that really true? Economists appear to work from a model that assumes that everyone is "rational," that is that everyone will act according to their "self-interest." What sort of definition of rationality is that which equates the rational with self-interest? Self-interest is a value. That suggests that the crises we face are economic only in a derivative sense. Rather it would seem we face a crisis of values. Read More

Sacred Terror Part Two: The Psychology of Sanctified Violence

Once values, goals and projects become sanctified, any attack on them becomes a matter of life and death. Sanctification of beliefs, institutions or ideologies sets one up for overwhelming rage. Desecration of sacred ideas, objects, values inevitably evokes a virtually boundless fury that leaps over all rational, strategic and even common moral limits. The apocalyptic destruction of the world becomes a wish, and maybe even a plan. The goal of transforming the world and the society is replaced by the drive to purify the world through violence and bloodshed. Read More

Are Some Religions More Violent? No!

Some people argue adamantly that one particular religion is more inclined to violence or another religion is more inclined to peace than the rest. That idea is false. Every world religion has sponsored horrific acts of violence and inhumanity (and the same religions have also sponsored heroic acts of self-sacrifice and humanity). But why are some Americans attracted to this position?

Sacred Terror: How Religion Makes Terrorism Worse

Psychological research on the psychology of sacred values, spiritual strivings, and sanctification underscores some of the crucial ways that contemporary religious terrorism differs from previous ethno-nationalistic and politically revolutionary terrorism. It is not simply the same old terrorism with a different motivation or rhetoric. Evoking and invoking the sense of the sacred transforms such movements in potentially dangerous ways. Read More

Reflections on a Long Flight Home

The experience of life totally upended by volcanic ash reveals that the structures of plan and intention out of which, of necessity, we construct our lives in the modern world are profoundly fragile and precarious. Much too fragile and precarious for the weight that we ask them to bear. Read More